NEWS

24 February 2011

REVIEW | RALE/3 HEADED MONSTER - SPLIT

Matt Blackall | Foxy Digitalis

This short-but-sweet split between Bill Hutson’s Rale and William VanGorder’s 3 Headed Monster does pretty much everything a good split release should do. Each artist is different enough to make their respective tape sides stand out, yet there is still a powerful, nearly ethereal, link between the sounds that they create, lending a strong sense of cohesion to the tape as a whole.

Rale’s contribution is the sidelong track “Someday a Gentle God Will Grant Me Ignorance.” The track opens with a serene chord tone that continues on for some time, until some some aural storm clouds gather on the horizon, that is. At first, you can only detect a low rumble, but eventually, the sound is broken up by thundering distortion. (To be honest, on first listen I was convinced for a moment that my cassette player was eating the tape.) Still, small patches of the original sound continue to escape as a reminder of where the piece began.

3 Headed Monster takes a considerably different approach, yet his four tracks of screeching distortion and fuzz manage to lock in nicely with the music from the previous side. The majority of the work here is extremely loud, yet there are moments that seem to hearken back to the restrained minimalism demonstrated at the beginning of Rale’s track, albeit in a much more abrasive fashion. Maybe this comparison is bit of a stretch, but as I mentioned before, both sides of the tape seemed to go quite well together, so it seems appropriate to highlight the artists’ similarities rather than their differences. Altogether, this tape is an excellent showcase for the talents of both Rale and 3 Headed Monster.